Our journey to Sri Lanka started with an Uber to near Chennai Airport, our driver decided to drop us off vaguely near our terminal and pointed us on our way saying it wan't too long a walk. To add insult to injury he also had no change, he did spend a while looking like he was asking various people wandering by for smaller notes with no luck, eventually we gave in and let him keep the rest. It wasn't like we could use the currency out of the country, but it felt a little premeditated. Once we walked the 20 minutes to the airport everything went to plan, the plane was even on time for once.
We arrived at Colombo airport and after a fairly painless visa process we grabbed our bags and set out into the scorching afternoon sun. The bus to Colombo was easy enough to find, after dodging the taxi touts right outside we took a left to a car park where the bus was waiting for passengers. It cost us 300LKR but it took us directly to the city, which is an annoying 40 minutes away from the airport. From the central bus stand, we searched for the bus that would get us to the area we were staying... we couldn't find one parked but Ben spotted the right number on a bus trundling by. Thankfully it was stopped by the traffic lights, so we daringly dashed across the 3 lane traffic and clambered aboard - this didn't phase the driver or conductor one bit! Sri Lanka, much like India has a very causal bus system and people get on and off pretty much anytime, whether the bus is moving or not.
We started off Sri Lanka with our first ever dorm room experience for one main reason: Colombo is expensive. Even with sharing a room with 6 other people our accommodation was almost double what we'd normally pay. The dorms were quite nice to be fair with A/C, curtained off bunk beds and an en-suite bathroom (In fact they were a lot nicer than some of our accommodation so far). I wouldn't want to stay in dorms all the time but the marital bunk-bed would do in a pinch. We made it in time to see a sunset over the sea, made even more special watching the sun's rays stream through the train passing by - only in Sri Lanka would a perfectly good spot for a promenade be made into a train-track.
There is a promenade further along the shore line situated on Galle Face Green, this is also the site for one of Colombo's night markets. Although there's some rave reviews of this market on the internet, we weren't blown away. There are some larger restaurant type stalls that serve a wide range of traditional Sri Lankan food but mainly we saw smaller stalls which all served the same three items (unidentified fish puck, prawn discus and prawn discus with leaves) It could have been the time of year that limited the market, with the monsoon still active in Northern Sri Lanka, the south was still getting a fair share of rain thrown it's way - maybe it's a bit more impressive when the tourist season is in full swing. Although we didn't eat here it was a nice place to chill out!
Since our only full day in Colombo was rainy and overcast we decided to head to the National Museum. The ticket price was 1000LKR (£4.22) which we initially thought was a bit pricey - having got used to prices in India everything so far was seeming a lot more money! After looking around we realised the ticket was well worth the money, with the exhibits being laid out in chronological order it was easy to get a grasp on the history and as only a small selection of artefacts were shown in each section they added to the narrative nicely. Of course there were rooms later filled with similar artefacts for history buffs that had specialised interests.
Along with rooms filled with ancient tools, an interactive display showing how early irrigation was deployed, and many many coins there was the mask room. These highly decorative masks are split into one of three categories depending of the type of dance they are made for. Kolam masks are used in comedic dances that parody traditional Sri Lankan life; Sanni masks - otherwise known as dancing devil masks - are used in a dance ritual to exorcise demons from those which persisting illnesses and Raksha masks which are used in ceremonial dances.
The most famous additions to the museum are the crown jewels and throne of the last King of Kandy. The Kingdom of Kandy began in the 15th century and endured into the 19th when the British took things over, they took the crown jewel and throne too. This was rectified in 1934 when Britain returned these artefacts back to the Sri Lankan people, a crowd of 750,000 people came to witness the display being opened in the museum!
We didn't spend that long in Colombo, backpackers tend to avoid it like the plague. It's a nice enough city, but with sky-high prices and not at lot to do, it's a jumping off point more than anything. So on our third day in Sri Lanka we headed off to our next destination, and from Colombo we headed to Anuradhapura.
The ancient city of Anuradhapura was our next stop but thanks to Google, getting there wasn't quite so easy (Well there might have been some human error along the way too). According to our online research you could get a train straight from Dematogoda to Anuradhapura, the only issue was Dematogoda was a 20 minute tuk-tuk ride away. When we arrived at the train station, it turned out that the issue wasn't the tuk-tuk at all but that no trains from Dematogoda went to our destination. Strangely, showing the ticket officers repeatedly that Google said there was didn't alter the reality.
So our options were to head back into Colombo and grab a train from there or get on a train to Gramhapa and then transfer, as we don't like going back on ourselves we chose the second option. We then waited on the platform and chatted to a local man who made his money selling hose nozzles to people on the trains... we'll come back to him later.
Our train was ancient and had the top speed of a particularly slow snail so we missed our transfer at the next stop. After an hours wait the train pulled into to the station 5 minutes early, and rather than leaving at the time allotted it pulled immediately away. Suspicious. It really sank in when the hose nozzle man seemed surprised to see us, he knew from our chat we was headed to Anuradhapura... he also knew that wasn't where this train went. He enlisted the help of another local was getting off at a change over station, who escorted us off the train the hung around to make sure this time we actually headed off in the right direction. Sri Lankans are truly lovely people.
Despite having the new-found directional sense of a toddler we made it to our destination... at seven thirty in the evening... eight hours after starting a five hour journey. That evening we were far too tired to achieve anything so we dumped our stuff, had a quick dinner and headed to bed - not before ordering what turned out to be the worlds biggest breakfast for the morning.
The breakfast started out with a delicious dal and fish curry alongside some fresh bread. Next there were home made steaming hot coconut roti and a soft boiled egg, as if we needed any more food there was also sweet coconut and honey pancakes (Pani Pol), coconut rice pudding and bananas. Just when we thought we could eat no more, our lovely hosts arrived with the best mango we've ever eaten! We couldn't finish all the food, but we certainly tried our best, when asked for our feedback we of course said it was amazing but too much food, they just laughed saying all their guests said the same. For just £2 each, it genuinely felt like we were ripping them off.
Slightly feeling like we needed a nap to sleep off the massive breakfast, we wandered off towards the Sacred City of Anuradhapura which was a 3.5km walk away. 40 minutes later we gave up on walking after arriving at a river that was supposed to be a road. We hopped into a tuk-tuk that took us to a bike rental shop near the site's entrance. After hiring bikes for 500 LKR each and paying the 25 dollar entry fee (ouch!), we were ready to explore.
The sacred city was established in the 3rd century B.C and was Sri Lanka's political and religious capital for 1300 years. Buddhism was prevalent in Sri Lankan during this period and it is clearly shown in the gargantuan Dagoba found across this sight. A Dagoba is a hemispherical memorial made of bricks, it's often painted white and has a finial on top - they are believed to house relics belonging to Buddha.
The most impressive of these monuments was the "Jetavanaramaya" stupa, although it's height was reduced in later renovations, at the time of building in 3rd century B.C it was the tallest non-pyramidal structure in the world standing at 400 ft high. Many Dagoba in the scared city are still active religious sites and important pilgrimage sites for Buddhists world wide. While visiting the Ruwanweliseya Stupa we arrived to see the Buddhist devotee's joining the monks in a ritual where they paraded around the Stupa holding up a large red ribbon before it was wound around it's base.
We cycled 12 km that day exploring the ruins of the ancient city, visiting several Dogoba and learning all about the sites history in the on site museum. It would be impossible to see all of the scared city in one day, during the cities heyday it covered 663 square Km and parts of the site are currently being re-discovered and excavated. By the end of the day we were tired and a bit "ruin-ed" out.
We really enjoyed exploring the site but our enjoyment was slightly tempered with the hefty entrance fee - I do think it's important to put money into protecting UNESCO world heritage sites but the price seemed ridiculous compared to other large sites we had visited in India. As much as we liked the experience it did put us off visiting Sri Lankan's other ancient city (Polonnaruwa) as we just couldn't justify spending the money.
After changing our plans, the next morning we headed off to our next stop; Dambulla.
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